Friday, February 3, 2017

Attack at the Louvre: the investigators on the trail of an Egyptian – Obs

Paris (AFP) – investigators sought Friday night to identify the man that the cry of”Allah Akbar” attacked the military at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris, before being seriously injured on suspicion of being an Egyptian 29-year-old, who arrived at the end of January in France.

“The terrorist nature” of the attack “is little doubt”, said François Hollande, from Malta, where he was attending a european summit.

The assailant, seriously wounded including belly by the firing of defense of one of the soldiers, was still hospitalized in the early evening.

According to sources close to the matter, the first investigations lead to a man lawfully entered France on 26 January by a flight from Dubai. “Unknown to police services in French”, he stated in his application for a visa to be born in Egypt and be 29-year-old, according to these sources.

The prosecutor of Paris François Molins needs to hold a press conference at 20.30 for a first official survey of fragrance open for “attempted murder aggravated in relation with a terrorist enterprise and conspiracy to a terrorist criminal.”

A search has been conducted in this framework during the afternoon in a building -houses including a hotel, a hairdressing salon and a restaurant – located in the VIIIe arrondissement of the capital, not far from the Champs-Elysées.

- Two machetes -

Six months after the murder of a priest on 26 July at a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray (Seine-Maritime), the last attack of terrorist nature committed on French soil, and claimed by the organization islamic State (EI), it is the tourist heart of the capital city that was hit Friday.

about 10: 00 a.m., in a stairway leading up to the mall of the Carrousel du Louvre, which gives access to the museum the most visited in the world, but located upstream of the safety checks, the man armed with a machete walked up to four members of the force Sentinel uttering “threats” and shouting “Allah Akbar,” said the prefect of police of Paris, Michel Cadot.

After an attempt to push it back with his bare hands, “the military is the closest, it seems, has had to defend itself in the face of aggression”, five times, “injuring seriously the attacker”, he detailed.

The assailant was carrying two bags in which was a second machete and spray paint, said a source close to the investigation.

A soldier, slightly wounded in the scalp, has been taken care of at the military hospital Percy in Clamart. “It goes well”, said the minister of Defence Jean-Yves Le Drian, during a visit to the site of the attack with his counterparts of the Interior and of Culture, Bruno Le Roux, and Audrey Azoulay.

the soldiers of the 1st Regiment of chasseurs parachutistes (1er RCP) of Pamiers are part of 3.500 military Sentinel made in Paris.

- The CFCM ‘appalled’ -

“I was on the stairs when I heard shots … It was weird, nobody knew what to do, I saw people running, everyone was panicked,” says Svetlana, an architect working in the gallery, which is hidden in a dressing room.

About 1,200 people in the museum or the commercial gallery have been confined for several hours, the time in particular, that the deminers to ensure that the bags on the back of the assailant did not contain explosives.

The museum of the Louvre will reopen on Saturday, has announced that Audrey Azoulay.

the French Council of The muslim cult (CFCM) expressed its “dismay” after this attack that he “condemns with the utmost force”.

Since the attacks of 7 January 2015 against Charlie Hebdo, the attacks and attempts have succeeded each other in France, 238 dead. The assailants, for the most part guided by the AR, have multiplied the targets, the places of worship (Villejuif in April 2015, Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in July 2016) to the attacks against the police or military.

On June 13, 2016, a jihadist claiming to be from the AR, Larossi Abballa, has killed a policeman and his companion in their flag from Magnanville (Yvelines).

the attack on The Louvre comes two years to the day after the attack with a knife three soldiers in faction in front of a jewish community centre in Nice, by a man who had been immediately arrested.

“Wear a uniform, (…) it is to be a target,” said the Interior minister Bruno Le Roux, calling in the forces of order to “the greatest vigilance”.